


The Sound of Silence

by ohmymongoose



Category: James Bond - All Media Types, London Spy
Genre: Angst, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, It is kinda dark, James is doing surveillance, M/M, young Danny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 21:50:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5602315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmymongoose/pseuds/ohmymongoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel Edward Holt, age 19. Called Danny. Left home at 16.  Average grades in school, but charming.  No higher education, but he had taken career aptitude tests as part of his schooling.  He was rated very highly in interpersonal skills and a desire to work with others. </p><p>James Bond is asked to do surveillance on one Daniel Edward Holt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Silence

The assignment comes to him last minute in an ordinary brown file folder. Bond opens it to find the face of a startlingly young man staring back at him. The young man—still far more boy than man—has a pleasant face with an a unevenly cut head of brown hair. In some of the other surveillance photos, the boy is smiling and his eyes have an appealing glint of mischief in them. 

He reads through the file, wondering what M would see in a child. Daniel Edward Holt, age 19. Called Danny. Left home at 16. Average grades in school, but charming. No higher education, but he had taken career aptitude tests as part of his schooling. He was rated very highly in interpersonal skills and a desire to work with others. 

_Well, that’s one way to describe what we do_ , Bond thought, recalling of the ways he put his interpersonal skills to use recently. Making covert drops and getting information out of marks, fighting and breaking bones…

The young man in the photo hardly looks the type for intelligence work. Bond continues reading the file, looking for something extraordinary would justify MI-6 surveillance. What about this boy could be outstanding enough to catch the attention of MI-6?

He reads the entirety of the file and reviews the video footage. There are hours of video footage in the file, mostly of the boy dancing in the hottest gay—interesting—clubs in London. Soho, just across the bridge. Men are lining up to buy the boy drinks after they watch him dance. He smiles brightly at each of them, clearly making them feel special. In some of the videos, he is under the influence of something. The boy’s loose dance style becomes looser—something Bond hadn’t thought possible—and his energy skyrockets. Even from the edited footage, it is obvious that the boy, Daniel Edward Holt, has danced all night. 

Danny Holt isn’t the focus of the next surveillance video. Instead, it’s an older operative sitting in a darkened bar that Bond recognizes. The older operative is probably in his late fifties or early sixties; it’s difficult to tell because life hasn’t been kind to him. Bond struggles to recall his name and has to flip through the file to find it. Ah, yes. Scott. Prefers Scottie. 

He watches as Danny Holt staggers through the door, looking lost and wrung out like a sponge. Scottie notices the boy immediately. As the tape continues, the mismatched pair sit at the bar and drink. Others approach, clearly trying to draw the younger man away, but he ignores them and remains at the bar with the older gentleman. The conversation appears friendly, if slightly disconnected.  
In other photos and footage, the pair are drinking. In another taking a walk. There are very few interactions, but Bond now understands the reason for his surveillance. A young, charming man with a jaded, rejected spy? 

When M arrives later, Bond asks her about his assignment. 

“He’s practically still a child,” Bond says.

M’s eyes are sharp and bright. “You of all people should know better than to judge on looks and age alone.”

Bond remembers little of that period in his life, before he joined the Navy. He alternated between fighting anything that moved and trying to sleep with anything that held still long enough. He recalls waking up to find himself covered in scratches and bruises, secretly wondering if they came from fighting or fucking.

“Am I looking for anything in particular?” he asks.

“Do I have to spell out how to do your job? I thought you might have such a promising career,” M replies dryly. “Any questions worth my time, Bond?”

“No, ma’am.”

***  
Danny Holt’s life is aimless. He goes to work—one with very little chance of promotion, particularly for someone who clearly has no interest in his chosen job. He gets on well with his co-workers, even the grouchy ones. There is an air of fragility about him, though Bond can’t name exactly what it is that makes him feel that way. Bond watches as a superior reprimands Danny and the young man’s lip quivers until he bites it to keep from crying, though it doesn’t stop tears from welling in his eyes. 

Bond tucks that little detail away for later. 

Danny takes the tube home from work. Bond had taken the opportunity to break into it earlier in the day to plant bugs. The locks were child’s play and took barely thirty seconds. From the flat across the alley, he watches as Danny slides into a ragged pair of jeans and a shirt that is slightly too tight on his small frame. Vans go on his feet—Bond had to look them up; they weren’t exactly his ideal footwear—and he checks his appearance in the mirror. Apparently satisfied with his appearance, Danny is off to the clubs. 

Inside the club, he locates his drug of choice quickly and then he’s on the dance floor. He’s a blur of limbs and hips. His partners come and go, drawn to him like a moth to flame. Even if the dance floor were empty, Danny would dance on. 

_He’s lonely_ , Bond realizes. And once he puts a name to it, he sees it in everything that Danny does. He sees it for the next several days in the way he sits on the tube, the way he smiles at his co-workers as if begging them to speak to him, the way he uses drugs to go and go until he collapses in a fit of exhaustion. Now he can name the earlier noted fragility: it is loneliness.  
On the last day of his surveillance, Bond watches as Danny enters his flat. Instead of dressing to go clubbing, he opens his laptop. The boy had shown little interest in technology prior to today, using the internet only to check his e-mail and read an online comic about cats. Bond waits patiently and watches.

Danny slips into the loo and exits quietly moments later, undressing as he goes to unlock the door. He doesn’t bother to close the window shades and after a few moments, Bond realizes that he must have taken drugs in the loo. He watches Danny’s movements become loose and languid as he strips naked and settles on the bed. Danny pulls something from the bedside table, opens the lid and pours some over his fingers. He then reaches between his legs and slips his fingers into his hole. Lube, then. 

Bond continues to watch as Danny prepares himself. He settles on his belly on the bed, his arms at his side and he doesn’t move. Bond isn’t sure what he’s waiting for—he didn’t call a lover—but he watches as Danny continues to wait. And wait. And wait. 

The front door opened. A man—middle age, extra weight around the middle—comes into the flat, shoves his trousers down around his thighs and climbs on top of Danny. Bond forces himself to watch as the man ruts, his face a picture of ecstasy. Even listening to the bugs he had planted, Bond hears nothing aside from labored breathing. Eventually the man finishes, zips his trousers and leaves without saying a word. Danny doesn’t move. 

Fifteen minutes later, another man arrives—tall and lanky with acne scares along his cheekbones—and does the same. He’s much more enthusiastic than the previous man, taking his time as if to make it good for Danny. He doesn’t make a sound.

Bond watches as men come and go, each of them taking Danny without speaking. As the night wears on, Danny’s response becomes less and less—not that he was overly enthusiastic to start. The men use them however they please, and most are not gentle. The young man will have more than his fair share of bruises and scratches come morning. 

So will Bond. His nails are trimmed short, but they still cut into his palms when he makes a fist. 

The tide of men slows between one and two in the morning and Bond leaves the flat and makes his way into Danny’s building and finds his door unlocked. Bond steps inside and locks the door behind him, lingering intentionally in the living area. Danny says nothing. 

After several long moments, Bond enters the bedroom. Danny is lying across the bed, still situated on his belly. Lube is caked over his hole and down his thighs, beginning to dry into a sticky mess. Though Bond can hear him breathing—irregular and gasping—he can’t see his face. He perches slowly on the edge of the bed and runs his hand over Danny’s hair. 

“When I was younger, I tried to fight my way across London. What I couldn’t fight, I fucked. I can promise you that it won’t help—“

“Y-you can’t speak.” Danny’s words come out in a sob, his breaths ragged as he tries to control himself. Gently—so, so gently—Bond flips him over onto his back. The younger man’s eyes are squeezed tightly shut but the tracks of tears are visible on his face.

“Listen and I’ll go. The fucking, it doesn’t help. But one day, you’ll find something that…makes it better. One day, you’ll find something or someone and you’ll be fine. You don’t know me, but if you did, you’d know I’m always fine. And one day, you will be too.”

Danny’s tears continue to flow, but there is nothing more Bond can do for him. He exits swiftly before he can say anything else—he’s already said too much—and pulls the door closed behind him. A twist of the knob tells him that it is locked. 

He doesn’t wait until morning to complete the threat assessment form, though it still feels like a colossal waste of time for a boy who can barely keep himself together. Still, Bond completes the form, documenting the details of each day. If some of them were a bit fuzzy towards the end, well, it was a long night and very dark inside the flat.

When the turns in the threat assessment form, he watches as M reads over it and takes notes as she goes. 

“What was your impression of him, Bond?”

“My impression?”

“What did you think of him?” she replies, watching him carefully.

“He’s very…fragile, ma’am. Charming, but hardly the type to steal secrets and topple governments. He doesn’t have that sort of ambition.” 

M nods and jots another note in the file before closing it. She locks it away in her desk drawer—not where she keeps her inactive files. 

“He’s hardly our type. He’s an innocent.” And not an orphan, though only by a technicality. 

“Thank you, Bond. You’re dismissed.”

As he’s leaving, she pulls the file back out of the drawer.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first first attempt at a fic since I was a teenager many, many moons ago. I enjoyed London Spy very much and couldn't get the idea out of my head. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but please be kind. If you feel additional warnings should be added to the tags, please let me know. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at ohmymongoose.tumblr.com


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